Will Wikis Rule the World?
I was recently asked by a VC friend of mine what I thought of a certain Wiki product. I thought my response to him (with specific product and people references removed) might be interesting. He asked me, "Have you kept track of what 's going on in Wiki-land, and what do you think?"
Here's my answer :
Yes, I have very much kept track of the wiki stuff. After doing eRoom, which is still among the best collab systems out there in my (humble) opinion, I very much believe that there's a whole next generation of collaboration that is needed. I say this because eRoom and others fall really short when it comes to get mass adoption. Wiki's might point in that direction.
That said, I think Wikis today are abominable. They have a few breakthrough ideas, certainly, but other than that they are IMHO very hard to use and will in their current form be adopted by few. Also in my opinion, in terms of enterprise adoption, they will suffer the same challenges that eRoom and all the others do: customers don't really experience enough pain collaborating as they do today over email and IM. They are and will continue to be hard pressed to spend real money on solving the 'collaboration' problem.
The more likely strategy , still, is one of verticalization : understanding specific use scenarios, building specialized flavors of collaboration stuff, and marrying this with the right marketing strategy and sales approach.
Mac OSX not easy to use!
Years ago I was a hardcore Mac fanatic. I was one of the creators of a long- gone early Macintosh application called Jazz. I programmed on a Lisa in 68000 assembly language. As I said, a long time ago 🙂
Anyway, for years I've been a PC guy, but still with a warm spot in my heart for Mac. Recently we got an iBook in our family and so I had a chance to reaquaint myself with how the world had changed.
After hearing disparaging remarks from Mac folks about Windows XP lack of usability and elegance I was all set to be blown away by OSX. Here some first impressions.
Yes indeed, OSX is beautiful to look at. It wows you with some nifty and novel animations. The level of design, colors, icons, etc. is all really enjoyable to look at.
OSX has a little Unix heart beating inside it. This means it's nirvana for Unix folks. But to the average joe it also means something: stability. It has yet to crash on me.
I can't believe that it still has only a single button mouse. And it's funny because you can see how OSX gradually is inching towards giving in on this little bit of obsolete religion. If you plug a 2 button mouse into the USB port, it works like a charm. And the scroll wheel works. And some applications even put up a context menu. But because Mac is conflicted about this, this is not nearly consistent and pervasive enough.
Gluing the menu bar to the top of the screen an antiquated holdover from when screens were tiny and there was no multi-tasking (even the term multi-tasking sounds quaint given that everyone does it.) The result is that it's often not obvious what application you are in.
And while the dialog boxes are pretty, they are not necessarily well designed. One trivial example: if you are setting up your airport, and you have enabled security (like everyone does) then it is not explained anywhere that you must precede the hex password with a dollar sign to get it to work. Another trivial one: in more than one place I was 4 steps down a 'wizard' when I decided to quit out of it, except there was no Cancel button. I had to 'back-back-back' to get back to the start.
Anyway there you have it. I think with this experience I would debate the Mac user's claim that Mac is inherently easier to use than WInXP. First of all, it's more similar than different and second of all, it's not all good.
[JAVA ONE]Sun answers my question
In several previous posts I've wondered aloud: "I can see that Sun spends a ton of money on Java. It must be astronomical. What's the strategy behind that? How do they make money on that?"
Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's President and COO, answers that question directly in his new Blog.
And in the " you can't win" department: One of my observations about this year's Java One was that there was a real contrast between the way Java ran this and the way, for example, Microsoft runs the PDC (Professional Developers Conference.) Microsoft works hard at and I think succeeds at painting a grand future for their stuff. Not only what is here today, but what will be coming in 12 months, 3 years, 5 years and even 10 years. A holistic and compelling vision.
In contrast, at Java One, I felt Sun basically appologetic: "No, Java really is fast" and "See, it is possible to write real time applications in Java" and, "Who said you can't make great desktop apps in Java?".
And with this posting, Jonathan Schwartz continues this appologia : "No, stop complaining: we do have an idea of how we make money on Java. Just like GE made money on standard rails, [and other parallel examples]"
I am not sure that the economics argument works (over my head) but I am sure that it doesn 't bristle with confidence and passion.
Scary Software, Part Deux
Continuing my complaints about Java Web Start, as if the message displayed on Windows under Java 1.5 isn't bad enough, here's what a slightly older version of Java displays on Linux:
I highlighted the message near the bottom in yellow: "It is highly…" I mean, really, what is the point? I can spend several hundreds of dollars (annually) on a certificate to change that message to "This application was signed by R. Pito Salas and Associates", and that would assure people who know me personally. I would hope my user base grows beyond that 🙂
BlogBridge Beta 2 almost ready
Well we've been busy little beavers and are getting ready to release BlogBridge Beta 2. It has quite a few nifty new features! I will write a little more about it tomorrow or Monday.
We've done a total overhaul of the content of the web site (the look/design is unchanged.) Take a look at our Brand New Web Site
An important change in opening the kimono a bit more is that you will find a direct link from our web site to install and run the beta. You are of course invited to join the beta group, but if you just want to play, go for it. Click here to download and run BlogBridge.
BlogBridge Beta 2 is now available to play with
Hey, check out our new and improved web site. There is lots of new content, particulary a bunch of screen shots and a greatly augmented FAQ.
Also if you want to try BlogBridge Beta 2 (0.5.3) just click here.
Java Web Start Sucks Eggs
I've written about this before, and after all it is fairly (no, very) esoteric. Java Web Start is Java's approach to installation and distribution and updating of Java desktop applications.
It's a really nice idea but it just is too full of problems. With a small project like BlogBridge, I guess it saves us some work, and so we use it, warts and all. Anyway, here is a bit that I found that articulates in great gory detail all the problems. I concur and I suffer with you.
Oddpost Sold to Yahoo!
Dave Winer comments on the sale of OddPost to Yahoo. I've been an avid OddPost fan for a while and I am glad to see them succeed. It's an impressive tour the force, an existence proof that you can build quite a nice UI in a browser.
One critical detail which is a bit mysterious to me : OddPost today runs only on Internet Explorer, and in particular, not on Macintosh. This, I assume, because the incredibly subtle and tricky code they had to write to pull of their magic made them not-cross-platform. Clearly Yahoo wouldn 't buy them if they weren't convinced that this limitation could be lifted.
But can it? And how does this relate to the recent dust up around Apple's statement that they are adding (incompatible) "enhancements" to allow Safari to be better integrated and interoperable with OSX? People are worried about the divergence of standards.
Scary Software
I love those security guys just as much as the next guy but this certificate crazyness is ridiculous. Look at this message that a poor unsuspecting user sees when they try to run a downloaded java application:
Inspires confidence, doesn't it? The absurd part is this: I can go out and spend several hundred dollars to get an actual official certificate which certifies tht I am indeed BlogBridge Inc. How does that help anyone?
A guy in Kansas sees that Microsoft or Sun promises me that Verisign promises me that this software is really from BlogBridge, Inc. Big Deal! Who the heck is BlogBridge Inc?
Unless you are Microsoft or General Electric, who knows if they can trust you? It's a big farce built upon beautiful and elegant mathematics and cryptography which is correct and yet impotent
Technical tweak to this blog
In tracking down a 'bug' in BlogBridge I discovered that my RSS feed for this blog has abbreviated items, that is, without html and limited to a certain number of words. That's not what I wanted so with this new posting I should have full items.
To test this, this line is bold
- And this line is bulletted